It's all very well having this vaguely square blue-coloured thing by which one may travel anywhere and anywhen in the entirety of time and space, but when the entirety of time and space turns out to... More > be a few hundred miles across and a matter of years... well, let's just hope you're keen on hot, spicy food and know better than to go getting all huffy at the first hint of human sacrifice.< Less

Robert Dellar, author, musician, and mental health activist passed away in December 2016, leaving behind friends, loved ones, and those whose lives had been left changed for the better by his... More > endlessly generous spirit. With this collection we remember him as we knew him, kind, occasionally acerbic, a trouble maker for all of the right reasons, passionate, talented, and funny. Robert left the world a better place than it was when he found it, and this anthology reveals how, and why his legacy endures beyond the cruel limit of the time we all got to spend with him. All proceeds from sales of this collection go the Mental Health Resistance Network, for which he was an advocate. Contributors include Ted Curtis, Andy Martin, Lucy Williams, Paul Mex, Amethyst Beeblebear, Andy Fraser, Stan Batcow, Jacob Bard-Rosenberg and others.< Less

Ever since the creation of our world just 2,972 years ago, many great men have pondered the mysteries of the universe. At the same time, other men have asked of themselves questions carrying lesser... More > ontological significance.
Who sprayed the shaving foam likeness of a chicken upon the bonnet of Frank's car? What sort of food might an elephant eat? What happens when your arse goes wrong in the United States of America with no Communism in place to guarantee health care? By what means did Owen Lees attempt to physically propel himself through the earth in hope of arriving in Australia? Why did no-one ever accept dinner invitations from the Coahuiltecs?
These questions are answered herein, although not the ones about the mysteries of the universe. You'd probably need something a bit more sciencey for that.< Less

As the twentieth century furtively began to sniff the bottom of the twenty-first, few had the prescience to look forward to a time two centuries hence when Gillingham, a cheap and cheerful fourth... More > division football team would be stood proudly at the head of the league as a plucky group of aliens, clones, cyborgs, time-travellers, and at least one behorned supernatural deity formerly popular amongst Norwegian heavy metal fans, a team which would not only bang that square football into the back of the oppositional net time and again, but which would go on to save Earth from all those unspeakable entities H.P. Lovecraft used to write about, and feature in their very own copyright smashing Godzilla crossover event of questionable legality.
Indeed, few had such prescience, and amongst those few was a bloke drawing a cartoon strip for Brian Moore's Head, the football fanzine which, quite frankly, made most of the rest look shite. Gaze ye here upon the collected works of that bloke.< Less

For the past two-hundred years, Lawrence Burton - author of widely ignored Faction Paradox novel Against Nature - has been channelling his most tinfoil-hatted paranoiac thoughts into a regular online... More > blog comprising autobiographical accounts and observations, essays, bitterly sarcastic parodies of the work of more successful authors, and general whining about how everything used to be better than it is now. An Englishmen in Texas is his life story in no particular order if you squint a bit, but it's other things too, and now you're no longer obliged to sit squinting at a screen to read the f***er because it's all collected here as a proper book, every last sentence plus a few pieces which were never used. Some of it's probably quite funny, depending on your sense of humour; then again, it's not like anyone is forcing you to buy the thing, so whatever.< Less

The Mesoamerican ballgame, Tlachtli as it was known to Nahuatl speaking tribes of the Valley of Mexico (those peoples commonly remembered as Aztecs), derives from an enduring tradition rooted way... More > back in times before records began. Commonly it was played between either individuals or two teams and a large and heavy rubber ball symbolising the sun (at least in some cases). The object of the game varied from one region to the next, although play was often centred upon players passing the ball through stone hoops set at either side of the ball court, no mean achievement where contact favoured knees, thighs, hips, and elbows, but prohibited use of hands or feet. Some schools of thought attribute a strong ritual element to the Mesoamerican ballgame, suggesting dynastic or even theological alliances would be decided upon the outcome of a match. However, other schools of thought tend towards the idea that it was a bit like Roy of the Rovers but with Mexicans...< Less

There's a planet on the outer edge of our galaxy where the indigenous populace not only worship something that bears comparison to an elephant, but are able to tell you about it in clearly spoken... More > English. Strange, although perhaps not so strange as Lerren Hansler's daily struggle on Llammas IV, the moonlet he shares with Siberian Mushroom Santa, Inspector Monkey and others.< Less

Lawrence Burton has spent the last five years catching up on all the crappy science-fiction he should have got around to reading as an Earthlet; wrestling with the mind altering grammar of A.E. van... More > Vogt; fighting down the urge to go out and punch a child in cathartic response to gormless Brian Aldiss spawned shite about space Vikings and special types of atom; wincing at Susan Calvin; shaking a fist at the heavens to curse whatever insane forces have seen fit to ensure that Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman should be viewed with something other than the contempt they deserve; snuggling up in bed with a mug of Horlicks and the mighty works of Simak; going bananas over Philip K. Dick...
For the last half decade, he has been writing up this shite on a variety of bulletin boards, blogs and the like. Now he has gathered this material together in book form, for some reason.< Less

About Lawrence Burton

Lawrence Burton, painter and Mesoamericanist, has been an author of fine blue-collar science-fiction since at least 1996, and an author of other stuff of varying quality since 1975, perhaps earlier. He very much enjoys the music of Frank Sinatra.